Impacts of economic and social motivations on makers' exploitation and exploration activities in makerspaces

Purpose - Makerspaces, which serve as fertile grounds for makers' innovation activities, are rapidly increasing in emerging markets to help unleash a massive wave of bottom-up innovation and encourage broader participation in entrepreneurial activities. Makers' motivations to innovate are key antecedents of their subsequent innovative behavior. The paper aims to investigate the impact of makers' innovation motivations (both economic and social motivations) on their exploration and exploitation activities in makerspaces and the moderating role of the makerspace climate for innovation. Design/methodology/approach - A survey was conducted for 139 individual makers from five makerspaces in China to test the research hypotheses. Findings - Economic motivation positively affected the degree of exploitative innovation and was negatively related to the degree of exploratory innovation. In contrast, social motivation negatively affected the degree of exploitative innovation and was positively related to the degree of exploratory innovation. The makerspace climate for innovation strengthened the relationship between social motivation and exploratory innovation and exacerbated the negative effect of economic motivation on exploration. Practical implications - The results offer managers a better understanding of how makers' motivation to participate in makerspaces affects their innovative behavior. Such information can guide makerspaces in designing their incentive policies and recruiting makers in line with their values to amplify makers' creative potential. Originality/value - The empirical results reveal the impacts of economic and social motivations on makers' exploration and exploitation activities in makerspaces. They thus provide new insights into how different motivations give rise to different innovative behaviors and imply how makers' innovation activities can be managed effectively.